Ramblings on explosives, guns, politics, and sex by a redneck farm boy who became a software engineer.

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I participated in a USPSA match on Sunday. It was the largest local match I have ever participated in. Originally they told us 97 people were attending but the results only show 92 so maybe some people left without shooting. That would be entirely understandable. It was a hot day for the Seattle area. It was 97 F when I left. The sweat was dripping off of me most of the time and I consumed two liters of water without once using the bathroom. Including my travel and registration time I spent 10 hours participating. It’s a good thing it was fun.

Marysville Rifle Club has stages that are more complex and challenging than those I have found at any other club. Don’t fool yourself into even thinking for even a millisecond these are anything like real life scenarios. They are problems to be solved using gun skills and your ability to move. It’s a game and this match demonstrated it better than any other match I have attended.

Here is an example:

Where, in real life, might you find something that looks like this?

Other stages were difficult because there were targets which were hard to find even when you weren’t on the clock. I, as well as many others, overlooked one target because of this and got a lot of penalties for it.

One stage required us to run about 60 feet then shoot a bunch of targets. I ran, shot targets, started to move to the next set of targets and reached for one of my four spare magazines on my belt. Three of them were gone. My stopping at the first set of targets caused the magazines to fall out of their holsters. This was a 30 round stage and I had just dropped one of my two remaining magazines that still had ammo in it. I had planned to do another reload when I moved between target arrays again. The magazine that remained was my one special magazine. It has a special follower that allows it to hold 19 rounds of .40 S&W. Along with the “super powers” the follower has a flaw. It doesn’t lock back the slide when the gun is empty. For this reason I don’t normally use it but it gave me 20 rounds in the gun and I decided to continue on without going back to look for the missing magazines or pick up the one I just dropped from the gun. I finished the stage with one round to spare.

An unusual thing did happened on a couple stages which can be blamed on the polymer coated lead bullets. They produce a lot of smoke. When shooting targets in deep shadows while the gun is in the bright sunlight the targets would sometimes nearly disappear in the smoke after a couple shots. The smoke reflected the sunlight creating a bright cloud between me and the targets.

As interesting as the previous stages were they weren’t the “best” one. Check this one out:

See the Texas Star on the right? Here is someone shooting one the conventional way:

In our case we had two Texas Stars. One on each side of the barricade. We also started the stage over 100 feet away and had to shoot 11 other targets on the way to the barricade.

With a Rhodesian Wall, which is not commonly used any more, the shooting position is a raised box behind a wall with a stout rope hanging down the middle. The problem is that the wall is so wide that you can’t shoot around it except by holding onto the rope with one hand, leaning around the edge and shooting one-handed while keeping the feet on the box.

Here is one of the participants in Sunday’s match practicing on the wall:

Yes. You had to shoot small moving targets one handed, around both sides of a barricade, while dangling from a rope, after running over 100 feet.

I have never seen such a difficult stage before. Many people in our squad ran out of ammo before hitting all the plates on the Texas Stars. One guy left three plates on one star and hadn’t even shot at the other one. With misses like that you end up getting a zero on the stage. There were stage times approaching 200 seconds. And I saw one guy get disqualified for breaking the 180 on this stage.

Fortunately last Thursday I went to the range and practiced my one handed shooting. I did well on this stage completing it in 42.12 seconds (an average of 1.316 seconds per shot) with no misses. I had good hits on the paper and got 154 points. The Grandmaster shooters in Limited came in with times of 32.80, 36.83, and 39.48 seconds with points in the range of 150 to 152. This put me at 7th out of 33 in Limited Division and 13th out of 92 overall.

That was my high point of the match. I also did decent on the classifier for a change. I might actually get my classification back up into the B range with that stage.

The worst stage was where I overlooked the target and had a miss on another target racking up 40 points in penalties.

Overall I was pleased with the results. My gun ran perfectly. But the fiber optic front sight insert did disappear sometime along the way, I think it might have been on the Rhodesian Wall stage. It is very fragile and I had to shoot through a port there (as well as several other stages) and it is easy to bump it on the edges of the port. But the irons were still fine and I didn’t really miss it.

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These changes are a test of reason. If you can reason, you fail. If you can Doublethink, you pass.

Daniel GreenfieldJune 30, 2015No Truce With The Left[Reason. I think of it as a test of someone trustworthiness. If they are unwilling or unable to reason I am uncomfortable being around them. I literally don’t have any idea what they might do or say next. Will they claim I attacked them when all I did was smile and say hello? Will they hit me in the head with a rock? I would rather be in the presence of a sociopath because I can model their behavior as looking out for their best interests and make it clear to them it would be irrational for them to cause me harm and in fact it would be in their best interests to have me as their ally.

But the irrational, non-reasoning, person is extremely dangerous. There is no loyalty. There is no mutual benefits. There is only unpredictability. There is only the prospect of chaos, suffering, and death.

Marxism, communism, socialism, whatever variety of leftism and you want to call it, has such a long proven history of poverty and death that only irrational people can support it. Venezuela is only of the most recent examples that went from an “economy was the strongest in South America” in the 1950s to the early 1980s to the massive shortages, unemployment, thriving black market, and the highest misery index score in 2013.

The USSR, mainland China, and many other countries learned their lesson the hard way with massive shortages, mind boggling corruption, and 10s of millions murdered by their own governments. Numerous experiments in the 20th century, on national scales, prove beyond any doubt the benefits of freedom and the hazards of adapting the ways of the leftists. How can anyone ignore the lessons of East versus West Germany? Or North Korea versus South Korea? China versus Hong Kong?

Freedom and capitalism has brought prosperity, and unbelievable technological advancement which benefits the entire world. Yet the political left continue to insist their way is “progress”. These are not rational people. They cannot be trusted. These people are incapable of rational thought and/or are evil. The correct diagnosis does not matter. Greenfield is right. There can be no truce with the left.—Joe]

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It is very hot this weekend and Barb went looking for a hike that wasn’t too long and with very little elevation gain. Franklin Falls met our criteria.

It was crowded and it is easy to see why. The trail was mostly wide and smooth. The trail was shaded and while it was 90 F at home it was 72 F at the trail head. Only at the very end was it a little bit sketchy with a steep drop off on one side:

The actual falls were nice too:

The bridge you see in the upper left of the picture above is the west bound lanes of I-90 just west of Snoqualmie Pass. As Barb said, “I had no idea this was here.”

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I tested out some different .40 S&W ammo the other day. Although I usually use my reloads I like to know which factory ammo can also be used. I seldom have reliability problems with centerfire ammo but accuracy is frequently a problem.

I was very pleased to discover that Federal RTP40180 (RTP => Range Target Practice) did well in my STI DVC Limited. The two groups below are offhand at 10 yards and 25 yards:

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If you have the right to slander the Messenger of Allah, we have the right to defend him. If it is part of your freedom of speech to defame Muhammad it is part of our religion to fight you.

…

Assassinations, bombings, and acts of arson are all legitimate forms of revenge against a system that relishes the sacrilege of Islam in the name of freedom.

Anwar al-AwlakiFrom May Our Souls be Sacrificed for You in the July 11, 2010 issue of Inspire via Fanning the Flames of Jihad[Someone doesn’t understand the concept of rights or freedom. Trying to explain them with ordinary words doesn’t seem to work very well. If someone attempts to exercise their “rights” in the manner suggested above I suggest you have bullets for back up of your words.—Joe]

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I found the gun debate presented here close to fair. I wish they would have done some fact checking on the claims of the people/organizations they quote. But overall it is pretty good. It has a collection of facts that could be useful. For example:

The most-recently available total annual spending budgets for gun control groups were $13.7 million collectively (4.7% of the NRA’s 2013 budget): including Everytown for Gun Safety ($4.7 million in 2012); the Brady Campaign ($2.7 million in 2012); the Brady Center ($3.1 million in 2010); Coalition to Stop Gun Violence ($308,761 in 2011); Sandy Hook Promise ($2.2 million in 2013); and the Violence Policy Center ($750,311 in 2012).

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A fire extinguisher is made as a tool to be used by someone who can cope, to protect his property and protect those who cannot cope.

The university educated, the entertainers, and media personalities, leftists in general, tend to wear their inability to cope as a badge of honor.

We’ve all see it; the guy well into adulthood who cannot drive a car, for example, and is clearly proud of the fact. Driving is what servants do, for me– It is not something I do. He has his nose in the air when he informs you he doesn’t drive.

If you gave him the gift of jumper cables and a nice floor jack, he’d be offended and maybe even a little scared. If you required him to demonstrate a fire extinguisher on a network TV show? Same thing.

Only icky people can build things, fix things, cope with unexpected dangers, and use guns or fire extinguishers. Eeew!

The Special Little Snowflake, or as I call him, “Fragile Little Flower” gains his identity through his weaknesses. He has learned that his weakness is his power over other people.

Those of us who can cope are to blame for this situation, through our failure to correct and through our capitulation. The FLFs are in charge of much of society and culture as a result.

Someone recently brought up The Lord of the Flies to describe the world, and it fits quite nicely. When the adults fail in their responsibilities to encourage and guide the “children” into becoming capable and responsible adults themselves, then all hell will break loose. That describes world politics for the last 100 years quite well.

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In the wake of the July 1 attack in which illegal alien Juan Francisco Lopez-Sanchez allegedly used a stolen gun to shoot and kill Kathryn Steinle, San Francisco supervisor Mark Farrell is pushing a new gun control law that will require every gun and ammunition sale to be videotaped.

This law will increase the focus on law-abiding citizens who buy guns and ammo–as those are the kinds of transactions that will be videotaped–while completely ignoring the problem of illegal aliens in sanctuary cities using guns, acquired via theft or otherwise, to harm citizens.

To top it off the gun was one in the possession of a Federal agent.

This is crazy talk. But as crazy as this is the sad/disturbing/scary thing is that many people accept and approve of this sort of thing.

It’s as if when confronted with lemons, water, and sugar some politician attempts to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Then a significant number of people want the government to force everyone to eat the sandwiches.

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The idea that guns provide protection appears to be quickly gaining currency among American blacks. In December, 54 percent of blacks polled by Pew said they believed guns were more likely to protect people than to put their safety at risk. That figure was up from 29 percent two years earlier. For whites, 62 percent said guns protect people, up from 54 percent in 2012.

Those are huge changes in a relatively short time.

It may seem odd to my readers that only about 60% of people think “guns protect people” (poor wording, but everyone should be able to extract the correct meaning from that). But if your only exposure to electricity was lighting bolts and electric chairs you might have a tough time believing someone extoling the virtues of electric lights, heat, and motors. That is essentially the case with people who have been living in “gun-free zones” for decades. The Heller and McDonald decisions, Shall Issue, and Constitutional Carry are having their effect in exposing the true nature of gun ownership. Or should I say exposing the true nature of the anti-gun people?

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It’s one thing to have dissatisfied customers. It’s another to have dissatisfied customers with death squads.

Bruce SchneierJuly 7, 2015More on Hacking Team[If your business model involves customers who enforce their contracts without respect for the legal system I would seriously question the long term viability of your business. There are probably better long term career prospects. I would like to suggest shoveling fresh manure as a better option.—Joe]

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Barb’s nephew, Tyler Brown, is a graduating senior at the University of Washington. As his thesis project he is making a short film about Ted Bundy. I’ve talked to him a couple times about the film. He’s been researching it for a couple years now and had some amazing stuff come together for it.

He was telling some other students about his project and one of them told him (paraphrased), “I live in the house Bundy used to live in. Would you like to film some scenes in it?”

Another person involved in the film has a VW Beetle of the correct color.

He discovered Bundy’s ex-girlfriend, who is extremely secretive, lives about a mile from where he lives. He visited her and gave her a copy of the script.

Bundy spent a lot of time at a bar in the University District and followed at least one victim from the bar. The bar is Dante’s. They still had the booth, in storage for 20 years, that Bundy frequently sat in. Tyler helped them get it out of storage and it is now back in service. Tyler will film part of the video in that booth*.

One dose of an inhalable Ebola vaccine was enough to protect monkeys exposed to 1,000 times the fatal Ebola dose from being infected by the disease, according to a new study.

An inhalable version of the vaccine means that highly trained medical personnel would not be necessary to distribute it, however researchers remain cautious because one vaccine this year already was shown to have no effect on humans despite working well in primates.

…

Researchers compared the effects of the aerosol and liquid forms as well, finding that the aerosol appeared to induce a stronger immune response in the respiratory tract than the liquid form. Because Ebola, which can be spread through the air, often enters the body through the lungs and respiratory system, the extra protection from the virus there is seen as important to its efficacy.

The part of the Kravitz character that well represents the anti-gun movement is she was a mostly ignored, shrill, annoying, busybody, attempting to get innocent people in trouble. Even her own husband didn’t much care for her. That’s a pretty good characterization of the anti-gun movement.

The aspect of Gladys Kravitz representing the anti-gun movement that is not true is that in the TV show Kravitz actually knew to within a small margin of error what was going on in her neighbors house and told the truth to anyone who would listen. Everyone, except the target of her campaign, thought she was a nutcase. The anti-gun movement is either totally clueless and/or is deliberately lying to the public.—Joe]

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Ry and I went to a steel challenge match yesterday. I shot both a .22 and my STI. The .22 ran perfectly. But with my STI I had one round with an oversized spot (0.434”, versus the specified 0.4241”) just above the extractor groove which locked up the gun hard. I had to grip the slide tightly and bang away on the grip with the palm of my hand to get the round extracted.

I had about 100 rounds of the polymer coated lead bullet cartridges left. About half of them would not fit in the case gauge. Last week I purchased the Lee Precision 40SW10-mm Carbide Factory Crimp Die and ran all the rounds through that die and tested about 20 or 30 cartridges. They all fit or were just a little tight. I tested the tight ones in my barrel and found they dropped in just fine. I didn’t bother to run all of them through the case gauge and paid the price for it. I think it may have come from an old batch of reloads from before I started putting all my brass through the Redding G-RX Carbide Push Thru Base Sizing Die. I had assembled thousands of rounds with that brand of bullet before I got the die. Some of the older rounds could have gotten mixed up with some of the newer ones. It didn’t matter as long as I was using my old gun, but it matters a lot with the new one.

Anyway… I finished off all of the existing rounds that might have the problem and should be fine for the future as long as I used both the specialized dies for the new gun with the tight chamber.

I’m pretty pleased with the results. I was top Senior in Rimfire and came in second Senior in the Main Match. If I had practiced a few times in the two weeks prior I might have done a little better but for the most part things were going pretty well for me. Ry took a few videos of me on stage 1 (see also here, here, here, and here).

Here is a video of four of Ry’s runs on a different, far more difficult, stage:

The most disappointing part of the match was that, as she vowed last time, Taylor didn’t hang out with me this time.

We have a lot of work left to do but making it easier for people to use their guns without getting into trouble is a step forward. The more people that have and use guns the easier it is for them to realize the magazine restrictions, background checks, registration, and “safe gun” rosters are stupid and infringing upon a specific enumerated right.—Joe]

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